Goodbye To You
by MistressOfMarauders
Summary: A Post-Reichenbach fan fiction. John tries to deal with the loss of Sherlock.


**Goodbye To You**

I saw him jump, his graceful body, a windmill of panic flying through the air. I saw his body lying crumpled on on the ground, the eyes that had always seen so much staring blankly past me. His eyes and that look of nothingness haunts me whenever my own drift shut in exhaustion. I feel the phantom presence of his skin lingering on the tips of my fingers, cold and still. Nothing to suggest how he had once thrummed with a manic energy that I had found contagious. In the silence I hear nothing but a loop of my own desperate shout, his name echoing through the air and the sickening thump as his body hit the pavement.

He had had given me something to live for, I who had nothing but the baggage of a broken soldier. By his side, I had come alive again racing through the cobbled streets of London breathless and burning with the fierce joy of it all. I'd been resurrected by him and I'd never really thanked him for it and now he was gone, truly gone and no matter how many times I whispered the words I'd always meant to say to him out loud in the darkest moments of the night I knew he couldn't hear them.

Now I am lost and no amount of distraction, pretty women or alcohol can dull the impact he left on my life, I am disorientated the way I was when I was shot and I can't find my way back. No one is coming to carry me back to base this time. The dark abyss of my grief has swallowed me whole and I can see no way of ever escaping. My work suffers and my boss eventually fires me, pity shimmering fiercely in her eyes. I'm not even worth being a doctor anymore, without him I am useless and I can't get my brain to function over the roaring of my despair.

I can't shut him out the way I used to when he was alive. He is in everyone I see, the curl of a woman's hair or the length of a business man's stride on my commute to work, I compare everything I do in my life to everything we ever did in those eighteen months. It all feels pitiful and worthless, a world void of colour. I am enveloped in my grief, it clutches at me tightly like a lover would in the last throes of passion, in a way I wish I had held him. It feels at time as though I am suffocating and I can't deny how badly I want it, want for it to smother me, press upon me tighter until it is one with the pain in my ribcage and I know no more.

Increasingly I visit his grave and sit with my back against the cold dark marble talking out loud to him. I imagine how he'd reply, the dry wit and peculiar deductions that had driven me mad with frustration and desire. Sometimes I laugh, but there is no joy in the sound, no grin on my face, it is a hollow laugh full of bitterness and anger, more often than not I scream at him, my face contorted with anger, tears streaming from my eyes until I my throat is raw and I vomit bile and alcohol onto the grass above where he lays.

I avoid the people we knew mutually like the plague and move from the flat we shared although I can't really afford anything else. I move into a bedsit, reminiscent of the one I'd lived in before I met him. It is dark and damp, it doesn't have any colour or character, there are no body parts in the fridge and it is eerily quiet without the soft strains of a violin being played in the early hours of the morning. I hate it more than I've ever hated anything. I get a job over the other side of the city, a doctor in a small clinic. It's boring and monotonous, my days are full of snivelling children and people begging for antibiotics. I can feel myself fading, everything he'd found and relished in my personality is retreating again. It is not needed anymore, I am not needed.

Time heals, people say and as the months pass in an agonising sprawl of emptiness I wait for the day when his absence in my life hurts a little less. It takes fifteen months, sixteen days and twelve hours before I see a spark of hope. I smile genuinely as a nurse as the practice I work in makes a deadpan joke about a man I'd' just seen and his haemorrhoids. I smile and it hurts my face, I realise with a jolt that I haven't smiled since he died. The nurse smiles back at me sweetly and my heart hurts from it, _traitor_ my heart whispers but I ask her out on a date anyway. Our first, second and third date are pleasant and blessedly normal. Our fourth date is at her flat and after dinner we talk about work and slowly branch out into our lives. I tell her briefly of the army and I blush when she says she'd pay to see me in uniform. She is everything that he wasn't. She is charming and social and sweet, as I pour her wine I stoically ignore the part of my heart that's wishing it was him instead. We retire to the sofa with our wine glasses and she sits much closer to me than I expected, it's nice to feel the warmth of her body so close to my own.

The dam of emotion inside me bursts when her soft lips touch my own timidly. The loneliness that has been my constant companion since he died is swept away in the tidal wave of my need and our kisses deepen the silkiness of her skin dismantles the wall of despair I'd built. When I finally slide inside of her I'm almost crying with relief, I had thought these feelings had vanished when he'd died but the woman trembling in my arms is proof that the man I was is still in there somewhere. After when she's sleeping I sneak away to her bathroom and sob quietly into my hands. I feel as though I've betrayed him although I never once told him I loved him and never believed he felt that way for me anyway.

The days lighten a little with her in my life and I refuse to let myself think of him and how badly I still miss him. Her presence is everywhere in my life and my heart begins to heal a little with every smile or kiss she bestows upon me. I fall for her softly, everything about our love is calm and gentle and I ignore the voice in my head that tells me how boring I've become, how frighteningly dull it all is now. I move in with her four months after our first date and it feels all right to be around someone all the time again. To shave as she brushes her teeth, to share a take away and laugh at a rubbish film on TV. It as far from what I had with him as it could be, the skull and moose head are replaced with vases of flowers and candles, she doesn't play an instrument but loves to read and I'm fine with all of it.

One night I tell her about him, the man who saved me and although I've never voiced the words I think she knows that I was in love with him. She isn't disregardful or jealous as I feared she would be but instead holds me and kisses me as my tears fall and the next time I visit his grave she is with me and I'm clutching her hand instead of a bottle of whiskey. I love her even more for her easy acceptance of the broken part of me. For the first time since the fall I begin to think about the future, I decide I want her, forever. She saved me when he abandoned me, when I didn't believe I could be saved again. I smile in the dark as I lie in our bed next to her sleeping form and know that I want her to be my wife.

I squirrel away money and go and purchase a ring, twenty four carat gold and diamonds. I carry it around like an amulet, to protect me against the dark part of my heart that will always belong to him. I know now he was the love of my life and that love will never go away but I should move on. With her, the woman who laughs sweetly and is adorably surprised when I tell her about the reservation I've made for us in a top notch restaurant in the city. She takes my breath away when she leaves the bedroom all dressed up, her purple dress floats prettily over her frame and her eyes sparkle with excitement as I help her into the cab I'd called for. My heart thrums as the taxi pulls away and I can't help but think of the rest of my life beside her, the ride is full of soft kisses and her hand never leaves mine once.

The restaurant is stunning and we're led to a cosy table by the maitre'd. My stomach is a tangle of nerves as she excuses herself to the toilet. A waiter, his French accent grating to my ears says something about a drink, and I send him away with instructions. Reaching into my jacket I fiddle with the ring box in my pocket, I take it out and place it on the table, turn it this way and that before I feel her soft hand on my shoulder and hastily tuck it back inside my jacket.

She sits opposite me smiling and I begin to speak, I don't even know what I'm saying but I think she's getting the gist of what I want when the French waiter returns and thrusts the bottle of champagne I'd asked for in my face. I hold back my irritation and tell him not now but he continues to speak, I glance at the woman I'm trying to propose to and see that she's trying not to laugh. Good, at least she's not running away. The waiter is still talking and finally I lift my head to tell him where he can show his champagne and my heart stops.

It's him. He's wearing a bow tie and some stupid glasses, he has a messily drawn moustache on his face but it's fucking him. Suddenly I can't breath, anger like I've never known is pumping through me and I can feel it burning through my veins. I look at my girlfriend and see that she looks worried. I huff a breath out and get unsteadily to my feet, I stare at him and want to hate him, want it more than I've ever wanted anything. He's speaking, that honeyed voice that I'd never thought I'd hear again. I can't hear what he's saying but the words 'Not dead' pierce my eardrums and I struggle to keep my emotions in check.

I speak, my voice trembling and I can hear the high voice of my lover calling my name, he's still speaking as if he hasn't been gone two years and then he makes a joke about my newly grown moustache and I launch at him, my hands closing around the lapels of his jacket and i'm propelling him backwards with the force of my fury. I want him to die, how could he have done this to me?

The rest of the night passes in a blur, a combination of wanting to hurt him and kiss him rages through me and my girlfriend never becomes my fiancée. We are thrown out of three places for my anger against him. By the night-time his face is covered in bruises and blood, marks from my fists. I feel no better when my lover and I get into a taxi leaving him in the cold and she tells me that she likes him. I lie in bed that night, emotions I schooled myself to ignore running wildly through me. I can't not love him but I am so very angry. Two years letting me think he was dead and not a single solitary word or sign to suggest otherwise. I'm to furious to cry but that traiturous voice in my head is whispering his name, like a drumbeat and I know that I won't stay away from him for long. That in a heartbeat I'd do anything to make him happy, that I will never let him out of my sight again.

_Sherlock. Sherlock. Sherlock._

The game is on.


End file.
